Volume 1, Issue 2 (2020)

GUEST EDITOR MESSAGE

The state of the world today is characterized by rapid changes, risks and uncertainties, increasing inequality, trade tensions and financial fragilities, environmental degradation and disasters, climate change and economic slowdown. While 2020 was supposed to show a slight uptake in global economic growth, the COVID-19 pandemic has shattered those hopes and we are now at an all-time low. The pandemic acts like a magnifier, showing us clearer than ever, from which ills our economies, societies and natural environments suffer. The headwinds unleashed by the global health emergency threaten to reverse positive sustainability trends. However, there are also longer lasting opportunities in sight.

Companies, organizations and governments need to create resilience towards unexpected events and build stronger networks of collaboration and coordinated global action. Having knowledge-action systems in place, being able to act fast and early, producing reliable data and transforming data into knowledge and sharing data and knowledge to create collective intelligence. In times of crisis people can build stronger institutions to alleviate uncertainty and build on their creative capacity to come up with innovative solutions.

In that spirit, I welcome the contributions to this issue of ‘Create Sustainable Development’ including, among others, corporate social responsibility, knowledge sharing in the banking industry, digital tools for assessing progress towards the sustainable development goals, participatory approaches for planning public spaces, green affordable housing, interactive graphic design, and sustainable construction methods. Thank you to the authors of these articles for their constant striving to gain knowledge, which contributes to our collective path towards sustainability.

Prof. Dr. Franz Gatzweiler Executive director of the ISC-IAP-UNU global science programme on Urban Health and Wellbeing